Maya returned to her apartment, the door clicking shut behind her with a hollow finality. She dropped her bag, slumping onto the couch, and for the first time all day, let herself breathe.
Except the air tasted wrong. Heavy. Stale. Her apartment, once a sanctuary of chaos and control, now felt like a cage. The vase she had broken weeks ago still leaned against the wall, shards glittering like tiny accusations.
She picked up her phone. A reflex. A hope that someone — anyone — would validate her, notice her genius, excuse the disaster.
Nothing.
No messages. No alerts. Nothing but silence. Her thumb hovered over Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, but even looking felt wrong. The colors seemed flat. The notifications meaningless.
She tried to rationalize. Tomorrow, I'll fix it. They'll see. They'll understand.
But the thought of tomorrow didn't comfort her. She was exhausted. And in that quiet, staring at her own reflection in the dark screen of the phone, she realized something she didn't want to admit: maybe she had nothing to show for herself at all.
The next morning, Maya did the unthinkable. She deleted Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Every platform that had ever been a measuring stick for her brilliance vanished with a few taps.
It was liberating. Terrifying.
She wandered her apartment like a ghost. Every surface, every object, reminded her of past performances, past attempts to be clever, to be admired. Even the broken phone she had thrown at the wall felt like a monument to her own chaos.
She tried talking to a friend online. Typed out a message. Then deleted it. There was nothing to say that wouldn't feel performative, hollow.
Days passed. Hours bled into each other. She ate meals without thought, walked the same routes alone, slept at odd hours. And slowly — painfully — she began to notice herself. The parts that weren't about status or attention. The messy, quiet, human parts.
It didn't feel like enlightenment. Not yet. Just… emptiness. A gray space where her ego had once screamed. And in that void, the first faint stirrings of honesty began to twitch.